Acta Universitatis Danubius. Communicatio, Vol 11, No 1 (2017)

Abstract:
In
this paper is addressed the new media status, which is created in the
digital age. Media in the digital age tends to be a business and
policy partners, whether for traditional reasons, or because with new
digital technology is not known where media is divided from the
technology, so where is divided journalism as a profession from the
business journalism. Media has become an equal partner with business
and politics, but has lost its partnership with the public. Where is
leading the journalism this partnership? Theoretical approach in this
paper is within the critical cultural school and in which are
intended to be detected trends, messages and ideologies of new
digital media.

Keywords:
media;
politics; business; partnership

1.
Background: The Era, when Journalism Loses its Role of Controlling
the Power

Linking the narrative strategy of
Scheherazade with the sphere of public communications and with the
media has already been done. Scheherazade, according to Arab-Persian
literary tradition, every night have to invent a story, in order to
live for another day. In the story on this tradition, Tzvetan Todorov
has made the theory of a unique model of narration (Todorov, 2000).While Ira Chernus,
professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado, also on
this tradition has created the metonymy which in the theory of
communication is called as storytelling.
Communication of storytelling
with the public, under his assumption, is starting from the premise
that politics is sentenced to death by the public and, to escape from
the execution, it should every day invent a story for the public.
This is "the story of the day" of Ronald Reagan (Tomgram,
2006).
Ronald Reagan, soon after he sworn as President of the United States
asked by his Office for Public Communications to invent "line
of the day",
which will be distributed to the media, in order the last will deal
with that news. After the success of "line
of the day",
Reagan team invent the "story
of the day".
After that, media did not have time to see more into the backstage of
the White House, because they were dealing with the "story
of the day".

With this action, the Reagan
ended the Golden Era of journalism, the era that is identified with
investigative journalism and the symbol of this time is the Watergate
Affair and the obligation of the president of USA, Nixon to resign.
This is the era, when media and journalists have been in public
service and on its interests, so many times have been the voice of
the powerless, and have often been the bugaboo for strong people.
This was the period when the media was called as the "fourth
power". The hero of this period was the investigative
reporter.

But, Reagan has "captured"
the media and this marks the end of the golden era of investigative
journalism. Office of Public Information of the White House has been
creating each day a story about the president, in order that media
and the public to deal with that story, by orchestrating the media
life and the public interest. Exactly the Scheherazade’s
strategy. Theory of Agenda
Setting of the media
fell to the ground. Now the media could not do the agenda for the
White House, but the opposite was happening, the White House was
doing the agenda for the media. This is the second media period, when
it is under the dictate of politics and is powerless to control it.
According to John Anthony Maltese, at the time of Reagan, Office of
Public Relations of the White House "has helped to be created
the counter-reality", so the reality, which is distracting the
people's attention from the real problems and creates the world of
symbols and myths, by which people would be so proud with theirself
and with their country (Salmon, 2010). The hero of this media era was
Reagan, the man who is deemed as one of the greatest orators of the
XX century, and his students later, Clinton, Bush, Blair and even
Obama and Sarkozy (Salmon 2010).

2.
The Era when Journalism Gets a New Role

With the discovery of the
tremendous impact of news portals (on-line journalism) begins a new
era in journalism. Media no longer controls the power, as in the
golden age, but neither is subject to power, as it was in Reagan
time. It has found a new way, is connected with government and
business, serves and assists to government and business, of course
for its own interests. Already have been reformulated the jargons of
"embedded journalism" and "embedded reporter" in
the pejorative sense: according to this concept, journalism goes
together with politics and business, it is in touch with them, or is
connected to them.

This journalism has a prehistory
and a hero. The first hero of this era is Rupert Murdock (Kosumi,
2016), not for the fact that he managed to become the biggest magnate
of the global media and to control about a quarter of all the world's
media, but for the fact that he drew media from political subjugation
and made them as partner with business and politics. This claim
appears as cynical, especially when you have in mind a mountain
accusations addressed to this gentleman about the negative role that
he has played in world journalism3,
but the truth is that he made journalism as partner of policy and
business, and with this he made the grave to journalism. Murdock,
first of all, was a journalist and later industrialist of the media.
From this position of the media magnate, he began to coquet even to
influence, the global politics. There are talks about his connections
with powerful politicians of the world, among whom Bush Blair, and
the role that he had in "the creation of opinion" on
various issues. The news and media themes not reveal
journalists, but are dictated
by the owners, in cooperation with their business and policy
partners. It is known the fact that the directorate of Fox News every
day has circulated a letter to all editors, producers and reporters,
with notes about the topics that should be discussed during the day,
and with which people have to be spoken during the day, etc. (Salmon,
2010).

Murdock soon after he bought the
newspaper The Sun,
has asked from the managing editor that at the newspaper's front page
wants to be a naked woman and a gossip about the Royal Palace
(Barbier & Lavenier, 2004). Obviously, Murdock
has had to make a newspaper for the low taste of the public. With
this he intended to conquer the market, which has succeeded: from a
newspaper with union trends, he created a tabloid, which is sold in
millions of copies. On the other hand, he wanted to create an
amorphous audience in terms of public engagements: an audience that
enjoys seeing naked women and gossips about the political elite.

The same syndrome has emerged and
repeated in all countries of the world, including Kosovo. Kosovo
newspapers in the postwar period began to devote more space to the
life of the worlds VIP, by publishing pseudo-news
about their intimate life, photos of well-known naked or half naked
girls. Kosova Sot
newspaper created the VIP supplement in the newspaper, with some
color pages (and pages of information in the newspaper were in black
and white), to increase the newspaper circulation and this example
was followed by all other newspapers. In other hand, if we see TV
21, television with
national frequencies in Kosovo, you can persuade that you are living
in Hollywood or New York, and that our neighbors last night were
quarreling badly, because Rihanna has fled from her violent man and
fell into the arms the new lover, while Kim Kardashian or Jessica
Alba has this week became pregnant, etc..

This journalism, today many
theorists calls as pseudo-journalism.
It wins the reader through irrelevant information and rumors, and
when it wins the reader, it has on its hand "the creation of
opinion". In fact, it corrupts the audience: instead of the
news, it sells to audience the pseudo-news,
and audience enjoys with entertainment pseudo-news in front of
"difficult" political and economic news. From this
position, the media (owners, editors, etc.), approached to politics
and business: the media have in their hand the capital, which is
called as audience, through which they can create the public opinion,
and for this are in need all the politicians and businessmen’s.
Already this media position is not the position of subordinates or
position of the controller to the strong, but the partnership
position: politicians and businessmen they have the need of the
media, and the last is ready to make deals with them. Already
journalism is not subject to politics and business, but it is their
partner. This is not cynicism! It's really painful for the fate of
journalism, because the essence of the problem is elsewhere: the goal
and ideal of journalism to serve the public finally ends here.
Journalism is the business partner and the partner of politics, but
it is not the partner of the public. This position of journalism is
at the harm of the public. Why to harm the public? Not for the
reasons of conspiracy theories, but simply because the public in the
nineteenth and twentieth century, in front of government and
business, has been having a partner, and that partner has been
journalism. The public has had a strong voice through journalism,
even when business and politics have shut down the public mouth or
newspaper. After the new position of media, as partner with business
and politics, the public is not protected anymore.

3.
The Era when Journalism is Losing its Partnership with the Public

Exactly, this postulate derives
from the period when journalism betray the public to the interest of
business and policy, especially from the beginning of XXI century,
and this is the main thesis of this paper. The main question is: did
journalism lost its way? Is it a business activity, like any other
business activity, whether it is a tool for enrichment and
domination, as it is the policy and business, etc.? Is the media
partner with public or partner with capital magnates and politicians?

The above questions are not new
nor unexpected. A simple click on the Internet and we can find a lot
of such questions. More meaningful answer to these questions can be
given to us, by the information portals and their effects on the
public. After the invention of the internet, journalism, before all
others, took its effect. For now there is still a war between the
printed newspaper and the digital news, but do not mind that this war
is already hopeless for the printed newspaper. Financial
Times already has long
time now that has written its own epitaph:

"After a long battle with
declining of advertisement, with the always higher reader’s
age, with the internet competition, with the high level of debts,
higher costs, inflated ambitions and stress, the newspaper industry
passed away" (Edgecliffe-Johnson,
2009).

Most space of the daily
information for all the people around the world increasingly are
getting the information portals. The mobile phone invention, as Apple
and Android, and mobile computer, like the iPad, and the WAP network
(Wireless Application Protocol), has made it very easy sending and
receiving of a massive information’s, in any possible situation
and from any place in the world, has facilitated the access to so
much information’s that modern people in every minute are
connected in the flow of these information’s. Never before has
there been such a wide range of information’s. It is created
the hyper-media
society. Already there is talk not about the impact of information
technology in modern human life, but to the modern human dependence
from the information technology. In a survey done by the professors
and students of journalism branch at the University of Prishtina
(Kosovo) for the "media diet", the student respondents
could not imagine their life without access to information
technology, and when they tried, they could not stand without it.
This information technology, alongside with the most efficient
possible distribution, has created also the dependence of people and
of the information it disseminates. This means that the media, in our
case an information portal, is having public under the control,
serves the public with information every minute and the public cannot
live the modern life without that access and without such
information’s. It is not here to question the quality of the
information. The goal is public invasion. The audience is overwhelmed
by information portals and it is inclined to accept information’s
even when they are suspicious, inaccurate, or even gossip. It is no
secret that most clicked news information of portals in Kosovo are
not those that has to do with a government decision or a law approved
by the Assembly. Also, it is not most clicked news, the news for the
killing of ten or twenty people in a terrorist attack in Iraq, in
Syria or in one of the European capitals. The most clicked news is a
rumor, or a VIP, or simply false constructions from top to bottom,
pseudo-news
as the discovery of a creature that resembles to human-but that is
not human, and until to even the media perversions like the video
footage from almost all the Balkan portals, which represents a snake
that ate itself!

It is significant the behavior of
digital news portal, Express
newspaper to its
readers, bringing in mid-2014 almost every day the comments of
"Assumptions of
Ms. Mary" for the
politics scene and political actors in Kosovo. Lady Mary is an
astrologer, who after several appearances on Klan Kosova Television,
became a regular commentator on politics in Kosovo in the Express
digital newspaper,
based on its astrological experiences. A click on Express shows 26
reviews of Ms. Mary, under the title "What predicts Ms. Mary
for..." for a period of two months (June 8 - August 6, 2014).

A commentary of an astrologist
for the political processes can be understood as a parody that
Express newspaper
makes to political scene, but so do not understand the vast majority
of its readers: her comments are accepted and distributed to other
social networks. In this case, instead of serious comments on the
political scene, Express
newspaper has offered
charlatan and paradoxical reviews of an astrologist, and all this to
gain clicks of the readers. Sensing that Ms. Mary predictions can
draw multiple clicks, the paper which calls itself as the elite
newspaper turns into a gossip club.

4.
Are Informative Portals our Taste or our Bosses?

These pseudo-news
are most clicked and through clicks the audience is "bought"
much easier and cheaper. This is why all information portals in
Kosovo (but also in the world) follow greedily the Murdock concept:
the front page of a newspaper with a naked woman and a gossip about
the Royal Palace. All this has one purpose: buying of public. By
offering the pseudo-news
and entertainment news, from one, and serving with digital technology
and mobile telephony to create connection to the network every
second, informative portals have created ideal conditions to buy the
public. They have conquered the public and now can affect it.
"Informing" the public is not the purpose of these media,
but that is a strategic weapon to conquer the public, in order to
move to other victories. This media cannot create "public
opinion" with its audience, as they are afraid Theodor Adorno
and others, who continued his school, but the media uses the public
as an asset in the market. It has on its hand these assets - clicks,
and now is ready to trade it with business and politics. The strength
of this media, thus their value as an asset is measured by clicks,
the more clicks has one portal, a bigger value has that portal in the
market.

The most profitable businesses in
the field of communications are now "media consultants",
i.e., companies that undertake public relations of a politician or a
party, a business company or a government. Political parties in
Kosovo do not show openly their payments for media companies, but
from the half of the information’s, they are breathtaking.4
In this new media situation gains politics and business, because it
can spread quickly and beyond their messages and create favorable
clientele with the help of the media, and in other hand wins also the
media, because it is paid by politics and business to spread this
message and to create opinions. Here only the public loses: the
public has no powerful allies anymore. This is the second time in
media history, after the golden era of the years 1830-40, when the
newspapers reach the circulation of millions of numbers and when
Alexander Dumas Pere won millions from his adventurous novels
published as feuilletons in the daily newspapers, so the second time,
when the media people became millionaires and powerful people that
have influence on major policies. It’s worth mentioning Silvio
Berlusconi, who the media power made possible that several times
became Prime Minister of Italy. In Kosovo and Albania have already
seen the millionaires created by journalism and the ambitions of
these millionaires - owners of journalism are not related to "inform
the public" but with business and politics.

Of course, these millionaires are
not created by selling of newspapers or from multiple clicks users
(readers) who buy news. The reader does not buy the news, but does
not even read them even when are free. Especially in Kosovo it is
difficult to find a reader that reads, but this is a show that is
worrying the whole world, not only Kosovo and Albanians. The user of
portals in Kosovo click a rumor before than a story. So, the
newspapers millionaires are not made from their assets, like
newspapers or portal, cars, etc., but from the introduction on the
market of their asset, known as public through the clicks earned from
them. The more clicks, the greater is the capital of an information
portal. In the end, based on the clicks, these media have gained
partnership with business and politics. Portals conquer the public in
all possible ways (without asking for the quality of the news or to
journalist ethics) and after having in hand the public, they do offer
the public to business and politics, as a goods for the market.
Evaluation measures for promoting a company in a business portal is
the amount of clicks portal: the greater is the amount of clicks the
greater is the possibility of advertising, because no company wants
to advertise in the media that is not clicked. The more clicks, the
more businesses that advertise it to the media and the profit is much
greater. Here is the key: the more news that attracts clicks, profit
is greater. It does not matter whether the news is true, whether is
important, whether it is ethical, or is not news at all! More
important than all this, it is to show how much can attracts clicks
the text or that image? If so, that is the ideal news. Because, as
many clicks as the greatest opportunity for businesses advertising in
the media, then the greater possibility of profit. On the other hand,
the more clicks and the more advertising, the public asset as the
value increases, and thus opens a new avenue: politics. Media already
approached to politics as a partner. Policy invests in new media and
media helps policy through the creation of public opinion. Some of
these investments are legal (if you want to have more "friends"
on Facebook, you can make payment of various fees, from 5 to 100
euros per day, so that Facebook can "impose" to its users
to make friends) and some others as illegal (the hidden payments to
create the public opinion).5

5.
Conclusion: Media is winning - public is losing!

Finally, with digital information
technology and with mobile telephony connected to the WAP network,
media and journalism has become legally binding partner with business
and politics. There are three factors that are working together.
Journalism is becoming rich and dominant, but it is losing its soul!
Journalism is no longer a partner of public and helpless people, but
is partner of business and policy, and for the self-interest. The
Scheherazade model to survive, by telling a story, in journalism has
become a model of audiences fraud by selling them "the story"
as an information, which is actually an investment in asset-called
public. Everybody wins a little or more, only the public, the
audience is the one, which is losing and lose more and more.

With the greatest information
revolution - digital information technology, journalism is removed
more than ever from its ideal: to serve the public interest. Media
people (owners, directors, managers, show-men, etc., but not
journalists) can now become millionaires or powerful and align with
businessmen and politicians, but are not anymore with the public.

Also in Kosovo, in the Albanian
space there are some cases where the owners of the media, directors
or their editors are lined with politics and business, have won money
and a dominant power in society, have become powerful people, but
have lost the ideal of journalism - alignment with the public and
helpless people.

Would this lining be the end of
journalism? Of course not. Journalism has helped, the information,
education, socialization and civilization of billions of people
around the world in the last two centuries. In whatever form it may
be, a modern man cannot live and prosper without information from
every corner of the world. In desperate call to competition between
the print and the digital journalism that "journalism
is dead" has
already been created also the response for that: “Journalism
is dead, Long live Journalism”.

However, when human society is in
front of fundamental situations, turns and looks back on its history
for analogous situations. Often talking about the old rhetoric of
journalism with the students at the University of Pristina, I stopped
at the brightness and the end of the Sophists. Sophists were
originally orators and disseminators of knowledge. Later, as they so
well mastered the skill of oratory that have made the audiences to
believe also in false things and have started to sell their
knowledge, and in that way have obscured their fame. It seems they
have done this, and this has been their deadly crackdown: the public
has not believed on them anymore. This is one reason why Socrates and
Plato hated the Sophists. Oratory, a comparable discipline with
philosophy itself, after two hundred years of brightness loses itself
and does not exist for nearly a hundred years more, until the new
redefinition that has been made by Aristotle.

Historical experiences are not
repeated, but they should be kept in focus as points of reference.
Journalism has been and is, first and foremost, a mission to serve
the public. Market Journalism of nineteenth century (American) is a
consequence not intent, the advertisement have always won against the
news in American newspapers, but this is not the purpose of that
journalism, on the contrary, its purpose was to afford the
advertisement. Also today, the purpose of journalism is a noble and
far beyond financial gain: informing the public, by completing with
this information one of the most important human needs for modern
life. Journalism even when is threatened by policy and businesses, or
even when is temptedby both, have to
stay in its mission. Avoiding this mission is suicide and a betrayal
of the public.

Briefing
on Shrinking Space for Civil Society in Russia, Presented at the
Carnegie Center on February 23, 2016, by experts from Human Rights
Watch and EU-Russia Civil Society Forum,
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/24/briefing-shrinking-space-civil-society-russia,
last seen on 27 February 2017, at 21:49 hrs.

3
On July 19, 2011 the British Parliament interrogated Rupert Murdoch,
owner of News Corporation, James Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News
Corporation (International), and Rebekah Brooks, the former editor
of News International, for the scandal of wire tapping. See:
House of
Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, News International and
Phone-hacking, Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12. Volume I,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmcumeds/903/903i.pdf

4In
Republic of Kosovo is limited the expenditure of political parties
in the election campaign at 0.5 Euro for voters, according to Law
no. 03 / L-073 / For the general elections in the Republic of Kosovo
and the Electoral Rule no. 12/2013 / Limiting of expenditure during
the election campaign and financial statement of the Central
Election Commission.

5
At the beginning of the use of “My Space”, to each user
was "imposed" the first friend, one of the founders of My
Space, Tom Anderson. In 2008 there were 221.036.100 Tom frends. From
this event was created in football dresses the inscription: "Tom
is my only friend." When R. Murdock's New Corporation's bought
My Space, Tom "forgot" all his friends and became
presenter of the company. See: Charlie Ger, Digital Culture (2008),
Multimedia Clio, Belgrade, 2011, p. 209.

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